Nine Years Gone (8 page)

I parked on the street behind Vince about half a block from North Side Custom Cars, Isaac’s shop. Four years ago, it had been an abandoned car dealership, but with some seed capital provided by me and Vince and a lot of work, Isaac had turned it into a thriving mechanic’s shop. Now, the dealership showroom that had at one time held Plymouths sported stacks of chrome rims and demonstrations of in-dash televisions and entertainment systems.

I squinted in the afternoon sunlight and walked toward the building, a few steps behind Vince. The doors over the garage bays were closed, but I heard the whir of a pneumatic wrench and voices inside. One of the mechanics in the garage hammered something and then swore loudly as metal clattered to the floor.

“Think that was Isaac?” asked Vince.

“Unless you know another mechanic who swears in Hebrew.”

We didn’t hear anyone swear again, but then we didn’t hear anyone work again either until we passed the bullet-resistant glass of the front door. A young man in a light blue mechanic’s shirt stepped through a doorway from the garage, rubbing grease off his hands and onto his pants.

“Help you?” asked the mechanic.

“We need to talk to Isaac,” I said.

The mechanic’s eyes traveled up and down me. “You friends?”

“Yeah. Tell him Steve and Vincent are here.”

The mechanic nodded and then hurried through the doorway from which he had entered. He wasn’t gone for more than a minute before Isaac stepped through. Like his employee, Isaac wore a light blue mechanic’s shirt, but no grease stained his hands or clothes. Bloody gauze, however, covered the tip of one of his index fingers. He saw us, nodded, and then pointed at the door to the garage with his thumb.

“Let’s go to my office.”

Isaac’s office was a glass-enclosed cubicle next to his shop. It had room for a steel desk, a couple of bookshelves laden with technical manuals, and a waist-high ficus plant in the corner. Isaac sat behind the desk, and I cleared papers from the chairs in front and sat down. The thin walls and door barely muffled the noise of the mechanic shop behind us, but at least they let us talk.

“Didn’t know you two ever came down to this neighborhood. I don’t suppose you guys came to pimp your cars out.”

“No,” I said, raising my voice so Isaac and Vince could hear me over the ruckus outside. “We brought your Jeep. My neighbors started complaining. They said having it outside lowered their property values.”

Isaac chuckled. “Serves those bastards right.”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” I said. “It’s not often I come by gang territory.”

He waved me off. “They only bother you if you bother them. You guys want to get a beer? There’s a bar up the street. In case you’re worried about your safety, the bartender’s a Marine who keeps a shotgun beneath the counter. Nobody messes with him.”

“Some other time,” I said. “I talked to the valet at the Ritz-Carlton this afternoon. He told me something interesting.”

Isaac leaned back and put his feet up on his desk. “And pray tell what was that?”

“That he and the manager kicked you out after you got into a fight with Tess in the lobby.”

Isaac looked from me to Vince and back. He put his hands behind his head, relaxing. “And is this where you and Vince give me a stern talking-to?”

“Yes, it is. What the hell were you thinking?”

Isaac took his feet off his desk and leaned forward. “Since you didn’t have the balls to do it, I told her to leave town before we all go to prison. She didn’t appreciate the request.”

“She checked out of the hotel,” I said.

“Good.”

I shook my head and pounded on his desk with my index finger. “No good, because that means we don’t know where she is. Do you remember Moses Tarawally?”

“The guy who worked for Dominique Girard?” asked Isaac.

“Yes, the
very dangerous
man who worked for Dominique Girard. He hired a private detective to take pictures of Tess and me and send them to my wife.”

“And that’s exactly what I was talking about,” said Isaac, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes. “That’s why she needs to go.”

“Since you saw Tess,” said Vince, leaning forward, his voice flat like a television detective’s, “has anybody tried to contact you?”

“Other than you two?”

Vince nodded.

Isaac shrugged and thought for a moment. “Other than regular customers, no.”

“And you’re sure no one’s followed you?” I asked.

Isaac shrugged again. “I didn’t know to be looking, but I don’t think so.” He squinted at me. “What’d you do with the pictures she sent Katherine?”

“Nothing yet, but I’ll destroy them when I get home.”

Isaac nodded and blinked, but then licked his lips. When he spoke, he spoke as much with his hands as he did with his mouth. “Listen, I hate to be the guy to ask this, but somebody has to. What does this guy have to gain by breaking up your marriage?”

“Nothing,” I said, looking through the window at the busy garage around us. The young mechanic who had met us in the lobby rolled a tire past my field of vision. “I think Tess told him to do it.”

“Did the pictures come with demands?” asked Vince.

I shook my head.

“Did you talk to Tess about them yet?” asked Isaac.

I shook my head, trying to force my thoughts into some semblance of order. “I tried, but I couldn’t get in touch with her.”

“Then do that,” said Isaac. “We need to take care of this thing before we all go down.”

“Of course, I’ve got to find her first,” I said, glancing at the clock. “But right now, I’ve got to get home.”

“Why?” asked Isaac.

“I need to pick up Ashley,” I said, glancing at Vince. “I’m late. Can you give me a ride back to Webster?”

Rush hour always sucks, but nothing ever seems to go right when you’re running late. That seemed especially true in Missouri, where our department of transportation is so badly underfunded that it can barely afford to operate salt trucks and snow plows in the winter, let alone expand and improve the state’s aging roadways. By the time the office actually conducts the environmental impact studies, secures funding, and starts expanding our roads, the project’s end result—still years away from completion—is already outdated. Ashley’s school had after-school programs for kids whose parents worked, so at least she wouldn’t be alone. I doubted that comforted her, though.

By the time Vince dropped me off at the house and I made it to the school, classes had been out for over an hour. Normally, Ashley would have come running out toward me, but as late as I was, she had evidently gotten tired of waiting by the door. I wandered the school’s hallways until I caught the sound of footsteps and the rhythmic thump of a ball striking the ground in the school’s gymnasium. Twenty or so kids remained, and most of them seemed to be enjoying themselves. The older boys and a few girls shot baskets on a hoop on the far side of the gym, while other kids sat on the bleachers to talk or do their homework. Ashley sat alone, her backpack flung over her shoulders as she stared at the floor.

I jogged across the room and then made eye contact with the teacher watching over the kids. Her hair had changed from blonde to gray, and her skin had wrinkled, but I recognized her immediately as my sixth-grade reading teacher. She looked at me and smiled.

“Someone’s been waiting to see you.”

“Thank you for keeping her, Mrs. Butler,” I said. Ashley stood up and shuffled towards me, so I knelt and looked her in the eyes. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m sorry I’m late.”

She looked at the ground. “I didn’t know if you were going to come.”

“I will always come. You don’t need to worry about that. I got held up doing some work, but I’ll be more careful next time.”

Ashley kept her head down as we walked to the car and didn’t say a word the entire drive home. In typical negligent parent form, I asked if she wanted to stop by Serendipity, a local ice cream parlor, but she declined and said she wanted to go home and walk the dog. There are worse things in the world she could have wanted to do, so I assented readily. It was only after we returned from our walk and started her homework that my wife called to tell me she would come home late, something I had expected given our conversation at her office. I read Ashley a story and put her to bed at a little after eight. With her safely ensconced in dreamland, I burned the pictures Moses sent in the fireplace and watched the news until nine when my wife came home. She looked tired and as worn down as I’ve ever seen her.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against a kitchen cabinet and watching as she hung her purse up on a peg beside the back door.

“Hey, yourself,” said Katherine, staying near the door.

“You want me to warm something up for you?” I asked. “I picked up dinner, but Ashley didn’t eat much of her shepherd’s pie.”

“I had something at work,” said Katherine. “I’d like to talk, if that’s all right. I’ve been thinking about what you told me, about the pictures, about Tess Girard. You’ve never lied to me before, at least not about something like this. I want to believe you, but I need to know what you held back.”

“This might take a while,” I said. “You want to go sit down?”

“Yes.”

So we sat down on opposite ends of the sectional sofa in our living room, and, for the next hour, I told her the truth—at least most of it—about Tess, about Dominique, about what my friends and I did, how we helped her escape, how we framed Dominique for murder. Katherine never once interrupted, but she did start crying halfway through. I took a chance at that point and migrated to sit beside her. She put her head on my shoulder and listened. When I finished speaking, Katherine wept, and I sat in silence until I felt it begin to seep into my bones.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Katherine. “You killed a guy.”

“We had a good reason.”

“Do you really think that was your call to make?”

It was one of those questions I wished she hadn’t asked, mostly because I didn’t have an answer, at least not a good one.

“I don’t know any more.”

Eventually, Katherine drew a deep breath and began to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes. “What do we do now?”

“You get somewhere safe,” I said. “I found out who sent you the pictures. His name is Moses Tarawally. He was Dominique’s chief of security, and he’s a very dangerous man.”

Katherine closed her eyes. “What does he want from us?”

“Revenge for hurting her, maybe? I don’t know. Maybe they think we’ve got money.”

Katherine chuckled. “If they’re after money, we should just show them a printout from our checking account. Might take care of the problem right there.”

“I wish it were that easy,” I said, tilting my head to the side. “You’re a doctor, and I’m a published author. No matter what we say, some people are going to think that means we’re rich.”

“Idiots think we’re rich,” said Katherine, closing her eyes. “What do they get by making me think you’re having an affair?”

“Tess is showing me that she knows how to hurt me. If we don’t give her money, she’ll hurt us in the future.”

Katherine tilted her head to look at me. “Have you tried to contact her about it?”

“She didn’t answer her phone.”

“This is unbelievable,” said Katherine, rubbing her eyes. “I couldn’t even imagine something like this.”

I pulled her tight against my chest and kissed the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her perfume, her shampoo, every bit of her.

“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you or Ashley.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but how do you plan on doing that?”

“Long-term, I don’t know,” I said. “Short-term, I’d like you and Ashley to stay in a hotel, just to get away from the house.”

“What about you?”

“I’m staying here. If Moses and Tess are watching, they’ll think their ploy worked. Maybe that’ll buy us some time.”

Despite my suggestion of going to a hotel, we stayed on the couch for another half hour, not saying a word. Eventually, though, Katherine got up, packed a bag, and took my niece to the Springhill Suites in Brentwood, just a couple of miles away. With the house empty and lonely, I went to bed, wishing I had gone with them.

Since Katherine had Ashley, I skipped my trip to Mary Queen of Peace School the next morning and instead walked Simon directly to my office. On the way, I called Tess’s cell, but she didn’t pick up and I didn’t bother to leave a message, doubting she’d respond.

Once I reached the office, I turned on the light, gave Simon a rawhide to chew on, and then walked to the row of filing cabinets on the far side of the room. In the days after Dominique’s arrest, I’d clipped every newspaper story I could find about him and saved every scrap of paper I had with his name on it. At the time I thought that if I searched long enough and thought hard enough, I’d find some way to bring Tess back, some piece of evidence that would send a very wealthy local businessman to prison for the rest of his life and allow his daughter to live her life in peace. Despite searching for almost two years, I never found it.

I thumbed through my file folders until I came across a business card paper-clipped to a story announcing the activation of the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis. The night Tess disappeared, twenty-five of the most experienced and best-trained investigators in the region commandeered Webster Groves’ police station on Elm Avenue as their headquarters and stayed for two weeks. They searched for Tess, of course, but they also investigated Dominique, his company, his family, and his finances, and they interviewed everybody they could with a possible connection to the case, including Moses Tarawally. If he was back in the picture, then I needed whatever information they had on him.

I dialed the number on the business card and asked the operator to connect me with Lieutenant Leonard Morgan, the former lead investigator on the case. Apparently, Morgan had done well for himself, because he had been promoted to captain. I considered asking if he now carried a parrot on his shoulders at all times, but the switchboard operator had likely already heard a lifetime’s worth of Captain Morgan jokes and didn’t need to hear another. I waited in silence for a few minutes as she connected my call. When Morgan picked up, I spoke before he could.

“Morning, my name is Steve Hale. I’m calling to ask about a case you worked when you were still Lieutenant Morgan with the Major Case Squad.”

“Steve Hale? As in Tess Girard’s friend?”

“Good memory,” I said, settling into my chair.

“My memory has nothing to do with it; I heard your name on the news a couple of days ago. What can I do for you?”

“You were the detective on Tess’s case. If you’ve got some time, I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Is this for a story?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “This is for me. I know you probably get requests like this all the time, but there are a couple of things I need to know.”

Morgan clucked his tongue. “I’ve never turned down the family member of a victim before, and I don’t plan on starting now. Tell you what, I’m busy this afternoon, but if you can meet me at a coffee shop on Washington Avenue downtown in about forty-five minutes, I’ll set aside some time for you.”

Washington Avenue, one of the few bright spots in downtown St. Louis, had a number of decent restaurants, a few good bars, and one of the best jazz clubs in the country. The police patrolled the street after dark, too, which meant visitors didn’t usually have to worry about being mugged or stabbed in the back by a twelve-year-old gangbanger trying to make his bones. In a city with one of the highest violent crime rates in the country, those are important concerns. If traffic cooperated and I hurried, I could make it.

“I’ll be there.”

He gave me the name of the place and I hung up and walked Simon back home. When I got to the coffee shop, I found Leonard Morgan sitting alone at a table along the left wall, a cup of coffee in one hand and a copy of
The Washington Post
in the other. His hair had grayed slightly from our last meeting, especially around a pair of long, bushy sideburns, and he had developed a slight paunch, but his eyes still had the same intense focus I remembered from the hours I had spent in an interrogation room with him. He held his index finger upright as I walked toward him, stopping me from speaking.

“Get a cup of coffee. I want to finish this.”

I did as he requested and waited in line for a cup of that morning’s special. The shop roasted its own coffee beans, a fact the barista seemed quite proud of. The way she described it, I was about to have one of the greatest coffee-drinking experiences of my life. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm dampened after having my first sip. It tasted good, but coffee is coffee as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t catch any of the caramel and roasted-chocolate notes the woman at the register had raved about, nor did I particularly notice the rich, intoxicating aroma and velvety mouth feel. Perhaps I’m not their target market.

I met Captain Morgan at the table and sat down across from him. He folded his paper neatly and hunched over his cup of coffee, looking more like a homeless man huddled by a fire than a well-paid public servant. A bulging white bag adorned with the coffee shop’s logo rested near his elbow, and a crumb-strewn plate sat beside that.

“Thank you for meeting me. I hope I’m not too late.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, nodding toward my coffee cup. “Did you get the Italian roast?”

“Yeah. It’s good,” I said, glancing at the bag of beans he had purchased. “It tastes like caramel and chocolate.”

He grunted. “It tastes just like the stuff I get at the grocery store, but my daughter likes it. I buy her a pound every other week.”

I allowed my shoulders to relax. “Honestly, I can’t tell the difference.”

Morgan tilted his chin down and looked at me over the gold wire rim of his glasses. “So your first instinct is to lie to me and tell me what you think I want to hear. Seems like little has changed since the last time we spoke. What can I do for you?”

I hadn’t expected the hostility that quickly, so I looked down at the table to give myself a moment to think of a response. As I did, I noticed his hands folded over the paper. The skin above the knuckle on his left ring finger looked pinched, most likely because it once held a tight ring.

“If you always start conversations like that, I can see why you’re single now.”

“Touché,” said Morgan, taking a sip of his coffee. “Now why’d you ask me to come down here?”

I blinked several times and adjusted my position on my chair, trying to put my thoughts back into order.

“I wanted to ask you about Tess Girard’s murder.”

Morgan leaned back. “Based on the interviews you’ve given in the past few weeks, seems like you know just as much about the case as me.”

“I know about her trial and the witnesses who spoke at it, but I don’t know about your investigation.”

“Why are you interested now?”

“Because ever since I saw Dominique Girard die, I’ve wondered if he deserved it.”

Morgan considered me for a moment. “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who dwells on the past.”

“I’m usually not.”

“But Girard’s death bothers you,” said Morgan.

I nodded.

“He had access to the best lawyers, forensic scientists, and private detectives in the country, and yet a jury of his peers still found him guilty of capital murder. Doesn’t that settle it?”

“I’ve heard rumors that Tess might be alive, that she might even be in town.”

Morgan tilted his head to the side. “And you believe these rumors?”

“No one ever found her body.”

“If she were alive, we would have found her,” said Morgan. He emptied his coffee cup and grimaced. “And we weren’t the only ones beating the bushes for her, either. Dominique Girard had private detectives looking for her until the day he died.”

“If Dominique murdered her, why would he waste money by paying people to find her?”

“He probably thought it made his clemency request look better.”

I nodded as if I believed that. “And I guess it didn’t cost that much if he used his own security team.”

Morgan shook his head. “He didn’t use his own people. He hired a firm from New York. Most of their guys were ex-spooks and G-men, and even with all their resources and experience, they didn’t find a thing. Wherever Dominique buried his stepdaughter, she’s gone.”

“Do you think Dominique worked alone?”

Morgan pursed his lips, thinking, before leaning back. “We looked, but we didn’t find anything to indicate otherwise. And before you ask, we found nothing to indicate that any members of his security team were involved. Most of them were overseas when he killed his daughter.”

“Did you look at Moses Tarawally?”

Morgan squinted. “The name is vaguely familiar, so I’m sure we did. Who is he?”

“He was Dominique’s security chief. Tess once told me that he gave her the creeps.”

Moran leaned forward. “Then I’m sure we looked into him. Any more questions?”

I nodded. “A few. Did you ever find out why he killed her? The prosecutor didn’t seem to think much of it.”

Morgan looked down at his shirt and wiped some crumbs away before looking back at me. “People kill each other for all sorts of reasons, reasons that don’t make sense to anybody but them. We didn’t know why Dominique killed her, but he did. That’s what the evidence showed, and that’s what I believe.”

“And you have no doubt that Dominique Girard murdered her?”

Morgan held my gaze for a few seconds before blinking. “Why are you really here?”

“I wanted to ask you about Tess’s death.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, I get that.
Why?”

“You want me to be honest?”

Morgan nodded. “I wouldn’t have asked the question if I wanted you to lie.”

“I had coffee with her three days ago, and I wanted to find out what you knew.”

Morgan looked at me for a moment without blinking, but then I smiled and he shook his head, chuckled, and started gathering up his things.

“If you want to waste my time again, I’ll meet you at a bar and you can buy me a drink for my inconvenience.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Morgan chuckled again and then picked up his bag of coffee before leaving the table. He didn’t completely trust me, but I didn’t think he knew anything that could hurt—or help—me, either. Hell, he didn’t even seem to know why Dominique would want his daughter dead. It looked like, at least as far as Moses was concerned, we weren’t going to get any help from the police.